ВСПЫШКА НЕИЗВЕСТНОГО ВИРУСНОГО ГЕПАТИТА У ДЕТЕЙ В 2022 ГОДУ

Abstract

Viral hepatitis is an extremely serious medical and social problem for humanity. The consequences of chronic hepatitis cause major social, economic and other losses. The most common causes of hepatitis are toxic damage, infectious disease, radiation exposure, ischemic and autoimmune process. As a rule, the causative agents of viral hepatitis are types A, B and C. However, other forms of hepatitis have also been verified, which are still poorly understood, for example, caused by other viruses – TTV, SEN, rubella, cytomegalovirus, HIV. In 2022, acute hepatitis of unknown origin was recorded in the UK among primary school children. Within a few weeks, the disease began to spread rapidly in a number of European countries. By the end of the second month since the outbreak began, the number of new cases exceeded 120 children. A characteristic feature of the manifestation of this disease was a severe, transient course, poorly treatable. In several cases, liver damage was irreversible (organ transplantation was required) up to a fatal outcome. But the most important problem of this new disease was the extremely difficult verification of its causative agent. For a long time, scientists could not establish the serological affiliation of the infectious agent, so for several months the disease was referred to as hepatitis of unknown etiology. Among the many hypotheses about the origin of the hepatitis virus under study, adenovirus is currently considered the most likely. However, it is still a mystery how the intestinal serotype of adenovirus (41F) became tropic to liver cells and, accordingly, why it causes acute diseases that occur in a very severe form.